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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Fweddit, Brainwashed?

I facepalmed while listening to this podcast yesterday. During parts of the program, it was like a Fwedditer was opening his mouth, and an Amarr-Bitter-Vet was talking through him. Some of the arguments they gave were uncannily close to what I’ve heard I.LAW members say in the past, and some of the discussion centered around Faction War events and discussion that happened before Fweddit was even in Faction War.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I was somewhat flabbergasted at some of the statements made that were obviously, and provably false. Most distinct were statements made about Hans Jagerblitzen. For example, they claim that he was for a warzone reset during his campaign, and then went back on it after he was elected. I think I choked on my lunch when I heard that, I was laughing so hard. Say what? The whole ‘petition to CCP to reset the warzone’ happened far after Hans was in office and he never backed down on it, even after getting threatened by some of the Minmatar. The discussion mostly just dried up when CCP came out and said they weren’t going to do it. End of story.

They then make the age-old claims as to Hans not caring (despite novels worth of forum posting that would suggest otherwise) and not campaigning to fix issues in the system (despite novels worth of forum posting that would suggest otherwise) and treating the Amarr as enemies. (despite novels worth of forum posting that would suggest otherwise)

And of course, he doesn’t want to talk about any of it because he’s greedy and is trying to keep the system so he can make mad ISK.

Which is why he pushed CCP to reset the warzone. Because….that makes sense.

It’s like an oldy-goldy sung by new voices –a cheap, Beatles knockoff of unoriginal opinions.

Then, they started talking about how the Amarr is really the only Faction suffering from a ‘great disparity’ in numbers and activity. I stopped laughing at that point and just stared at my mp3 player in disbelief…are they serious? Or is this a troll?

Disparities between the Caldari and Gallente far outweigh anything we experience in the Minmatar/Amarr, with literally THOUSANDS of pilots difference in enrollment numbers. And the Amarr think Sasawong is a plexing demon? The Caldari are like plexing MANIACS. They plex so much that the in-game Victory Point stat sheet stopped reporting their weekly totals in terms of thousands like the rest of the Factions, and started displaying it in terms of MILLIONS instead.

Don’t make me get out my spreadsheets! I’ll do it!

I reverted back to laughter, however, at the comments about our blobbing fleet stabbers. The sky is falling! The Minmatar are winning because they have small gangs of 7-10 Fleet Stabbers!

Quick Minmatar! Lock down the hatches! The Amarr have found us out and we must protect the Fleet Stabbers AT ALL COSTS.

In all seriousness though, I sometimes wonder…

How many nights do the Amarr need to drop 80 guys on our 25 man fleets before they consider themselves not to be the overwhelmingly outnumbered underdog fighting against horrific odds?

And how many millions of words more must Hans Jagerblitzen write before the Amarr realize he actually cares about Faction War as a whole and has given up a part of his real life to engage with the community and improve aspects of the game mechanics?

Anyway, kudos to the podcaster who has an interesting show, and organizes things really well. I don't usually go for podcasts, but I actually enjoyed the formatting of this one.

Almity, the Minmatar have had plenty of times where they have been outnumbered and outgunned for a long period of time as well.

This was not meant to be a discussion on 'numbers' just an observation that even though the Amarr are seeing good turnouts, they are still referring to themselves as some sort of weak, outnumbered militia.

Even if the numbers were equil and we had back and fourth fights every night it would be hard for the militia with less systems and active people(including non pvpers...the plexing to make isk type)to make an efficient come back.

If the majority of a sides pilots are involved in pvp it becomes difficult to plex systems offensively or defensively. They have to focus on a few systems to keep the enemy fleet busy. While they do that the plex for isk people run free.

Right now the Minmatar seem to have more plex for isk members. For good reason. An alt in a stabbed vigil afking a major is good isk. No one can deny that and I wont fault people for doing it(as long as they are not amarr alts plexing).

The current system favors the victor a little to much and gives incentive for people to join them. While those plex for isk pilots and alts my not effect the fleet fights it does make the "war" much more difficult for the losing side. The other side effect is more isk for you and much less for me. I fly a ruppy you fly an SFI kind of thing.

There you go Susan. My real effort to have a productive conversation with you about the challenges and issues of being on the side with less systems.

Why would it be hard to make a comeback? It seems like you are saying that you can't make a comeback because you are too busy pvping to plex...but maybe I'm missing something.

How does the system favor the victors? Perks for winning is a benefit of winning, as are consequences for losing. If there were no perks or consequences, then they're be no point to winning? What would your propose instead?

As far as the ISK issue, while I think there should be monetary benefits to winning, I agree that making losing so bad that you might as well do lvl 4 mission in high-sec is kind of dumb. People should be encouraged to join any side in FW. However, how do you create a system that has enough consequences that the losing side is motivated? I mean, if it was still really lucrative to be losing, what motivation were there be to win?

I don't think the Minmatar have a right to be defensive about stuff. It's been proven that there was massive exploitation going in the Minmatar militia. Yet all this blog does is whine about Amarr and slurs to hans. And no mention of your Goon Overlords.

I don't think Han's is really to blame for that. Just CCP - who are Reeaaally bad at designing stuff. And yeah, they do have a history of favoring factions/friends. After all, Eve isn't fair.

I'd love to have a decent conversation with an Amarr about mechanics, but we get kind of stuck between them saying it's broken because it inconveniences them, or claiming that anything I say is biased and invalid because I'm a Minmatar....lol

No Susan, you are not biased, you just suffer from entitlement and privilege. You really do believe that the advantage the Minmatar have now is due to actions of the good players only.

Can't you really see that you were favoured by game mechanics, not to mention goons exploitation, for a long time and that to the other side who have to experience an unfair situation now have troubles to come back in equal footing?

I hate to make comparison of real problems with in game silly stuff, but you are acting like white people who think affirmative actions are unfair with them. You don't see the privileged situation that you are, and you complain that the one's in an disadvantageous position are not up to par to compete with you.

There is no excuse to not see this reality, but you also couldn't see in the interview the attempt of the reddit dude of rally his people by making Hans a straw man. The Ammar are tired, not of loosing in PVP only, but of not being in equal foot to compete. And to follow my early comparison, they are mostly white boys not use to being in disadvantage.

The FW became a plex fest. Not a single plex was taken for strategic reasons by people involved in the FW, instead of given reason for the factions to fight, or rewards for them buy stuff to fight with, it became a source if income for week old alts of lazy people. How long till someone make a bot to farm LP? If it doesn't exist already.

Are you serious? what mechanics are broken?People in your pathetically unbonded and dramafilled alliance have been exploiting these mechanics since Inferno. They're called FW plexes. You know, the one you can run with few-day-old alts in a speed tanked frig. From the perspective of an FC and a fleet, which I'm sure you always look from, taking plexes = taking sov of system = benefit. From the perspective of everyone else, taking plexes = LP = huge fucking amounts of isk. That needs to be changed.The Amarr-blaming-hans issue has nothing to do with this. This is a vastly different and hugely more significant problem that needs to be addressed first, because the whole Eve economy can be affected. The Goons have already done this regardless of your egoistic ventures trying to explain its all because 'we are simply good enough to LP our way to tier 4'. Sure, we are good enough. But obviously you weren't there the couple of times we spiked to tier 5 for up to a few minutes to a couple of hours. Emphasis on 'spiked'. For more clarity, the inference means 'temporarily'.I don't hate you as a player or as a person, it's just how ignorant your posts are becoming that are badly misrepresenting the ---majority--- of the minmatar militia, not just your party of dramalammas.

On the other issues you talked about, yeah, Amarr do blob a lot. nothing CCP can do to change that, nor minmatar, really.Some Amarr hate Hans. This can be remedied, susan, and I'm very sure Hans is more than capable of doing this. Unfortunately though, as a member of the CSM and therefore, as a member that holds responsibility over both the Amarr and Minmatar, this might just take a while, as actions > words.

And if you haven't realised, I'm from minmatar miltia, but I'm not in iron oxide. Sadly, I'm in your alliance, who thankfully still has a couple of great guys that make it worth it to stay.

Basically I think in order for them to start liking Hans again, you guys will have to lose control of your FW space. If you get down to ten systems, mark my words, the Amarr will suddenly love Hans again. And if that ever happens, you can point to this comment by a random Unista when you inevitably blog about it. ;P

There is a difference between whining and bringing up concerns. The Amarr old-guard is whining and not doing anything; Fweddit is bringing up very legitimate concerns and still fighting every night despite the problems.

The wealth disparity, and the difficulty of overcoming it is a real, dominating problem. The whole conversation about SFIs that you seem to gleefully mock is a legitimate point; the Minmatar can fly these things for as cheap as Fweddit flies their thrashers...except one SFI can annhilate several thrashers. It's just a practical example of how the Minmatar have benefited from T4 for so long, and how ridiculous the price variation between T1-T5 is. There is a difference between incentive and complete, overwhelming one-sidedness. Afk offensive plexing for the minmatar is literally one of the best ways in the game to make isk, alongside one of the easiest.

As for Hans, the Fweddit guys express their disappointment but don't put on their tinfoil hats. Zeuth rejects the idea of the "insider information" accusation. The thing is, Hans was elected to improve FW. And honestly, I'm just not seeing it. It may be whining, but the Amarr bring legitimate concerns to the table and they've been largely ignored or disregarded by Hans; even groups like Fweddit that fight despite the disadvantages they face.

Additionally, FW is effectively two games now. One is the PvP, which I think you would agree with that Fweddit is more than happy to play, bringing lots of new players into PvP and genuinely enjoying themselves (along with everyone else).

The second game is plexing, which while occasionally generates fights, is far more often an exercise of profit and is absolutely, 100%, dominated by the minmatar. Why would you plex for the Amarr when you can make ridiculous sums of money doing it for the minmatar? This second game is what is really frustrating, as this, not PvP, controls the warzone. You may work hard, and put effort into the Minmatar war effort. But, unlike what you say, the Minmatar's hard work is not what is winning this war for them; it's the army of for-profit plexers who joined solely to take advantage of your LP stores.

I don't dislike or like Hans and whether or not we were doing well in FW wouldn't make much difference but I admit I generally throw out scorn to anyone on the CSM as I despise the whole concept but it's nothing personal towards him.

Now if I wanted to 'WIN' FW I'd have voted that we go Minmatar as we pretty much had zero standings with every faction but it's really easy to see how everyone went bitter vet in record time on the Amarr side and I'm not far off myself.

Trying to make any money at all doing FW is pretty much impossible when your side is in the dumpster anything I can get on the LP store I can buy cheaper on the ISK value alone from Jita never mind I also have to spend LP trying to fund yourself in that situation becomes an impossible task.

I'm literally going round while doing FW looking for the odd wreck someone might have forgotten to loot/salvage to sell just to buy my next thrasher/ammo and I can't imagine how I'm ever going to be able to afford to ship up to cruisers etc.

Maybe the new clothes added to the FW stores will become a new craze that everyone must have and all funding issues will disappear but I doubt it.

Very large image but shows why I'm on my way to bitter vet/quitting FW status in record time http://i.imgur.com/LPoDW.png

Let me follow han's advice and not talk in terms of groups be they "bitter amarr vets" "Fweddit FWodder" or "minmatar." There are issues that everyone who has been playing this game can readilly see:

1) The plexing is not sufficiently pvp centered. I have been pushing to have this addressed for years. I kept getting the response that once plexing has consequences people will fight over them. Well now finally people are realizing that is not really the case. There are many proposals that will help on this issue. Timer count down if you get kicked from a plex. Also notifications of who enters or exits plexes so players can react. Etc.

2) Plexing for minmatar is much easier than for amarr.

Lets fix these 2 issues and faction war will be much much better. I think very few who follow this blog would not agree these two things are problems.

Now other issues have been raised and I think there is considerable disagreement on these issues:

1) Whether goons helped minmatar very much. Some help yes but not much. Minmatar can easilly get the @6 mill lp needed to bring them from tier 1 to tier 5. They will likely do this again. They don't need to stay there long. Just long enough to cash out their lp!

2) Whether amarr can come back. I think we can due to the no lp for defensive plexing rule. However amarr are simply not employing strategies to use that rule to our advantage. We keep flipping systems right next the minmatar bases and feeding them lp! This is dumb and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

The caldari seem to be much more organized and frankly smarter from a occupancy plexing perspective. Amarr got this idea of defending some sort of "pipeline" early on. Nothing is being piped through this pipeline because eve mechanics don't work like world war 1. But nonetheless old strategies seem to die hard.

3) Whether the lp disparaty is too large. I tink it is not too large. Given that no lp for defensive plexing is given the amarr could easilly turn the tables on the minmatar by not actually taking systems but leaving them vulnerable. This is what we see caldari and gallente doing. And yes its because they are smart about plexing. After the amarr get the upper hand then minmatar will be able to flip it back. And this flip flopping is how all people in faction war will be able to afford top notch ships and fittings to continue the war. These large rewards gives us reason to plex and to defend plexes. (note by defend plexes I do not mean defensive plexing. I mean fighting enemies who try to plex in your space)

4) Station lockouts. IMO this was stupid and remains stupid. And yes it is annoying to hear hans or even fweddit say its no big deal. Neither was effected by this change! As far aw I know fweddit is still based outside faction war and they have no idea how great it was from a pvp perspective to have the stations open thoughout the warzone. Lockouts simply makes it harder for the side with fewer systems to field pvp fleets. For a casual gamer like me who will never again base out of faction war unless ccp undoes this rule it is not at all a reason to fight. I don't care if kamela falls from a docking perspective. Tuomuta is right next to it and I used to base out of there anyway. I still have a bunch of stuff there in fact. However not being able to reship in frerstorn or arzad sucks and has cost me plenty of fights. It has also made the war zone blob up in and around kourm. I would love to see the percentages of fw pvp that take place in all the fw systems in april compared to june. I think you will find the pvp was much more spread out in april with lots of small gangs rolling througout the faction war zone. People who just joined faction war after inferno simply didn't get a chance to understand how great that was.

I am confused. If the Minnie have taken so many systems; surely this gives the Amarr plenty of space to offensively plex and gain LPs? Right? You don't get any LPs for defensive plexing which the Miinie will have to do. Only offensive plexing (and FW missions and killing opposing FW pilots) gains LP - the Minnie cannot be everywhere at once. The Amarr need to change tactics. I don't see them attacking the quieter Minnie systems (around Brin, Ofstold, Evati for example) - just around Kourm/Kamela. Pull the Minnie around all over the map. I am in the Amarr and still enjoying it, but I know if the situation was reversed with the Minnine in our place; the arguments would be the same. Come Amarr, HTFU. Amarr Victor.

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